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Do Scientific Management principles hinder or help contemporary leadership Practices?
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Do Scientific Management principles hinder or help contemporary leadership Practices?
Leadership plays a fundamental role in organizations, governments, and family platforms. Before, the 1900s there lacked a contemporary management theory as experienced today. Following the rise of many scholars, who were concerned with addressing the existing gaps in management and leadership respectively, today exists many theories that are applicable to management and leaders in an organization. Among the earlier theories, the scientific management concept has remained popular since its inception by Fredrick Taylor. The scientific management movement produced revolutionary ideas for the time. In this regard, concepts such as worker training and implementation of standardized best practices to improve productivity have been put in the application. Taylor’s theory was referred to as scientific because to develop it, he employed techniques borrowed from botanists and chemists, such as analysis, observation, synthesis, rationality, and logic (Merkle, 2018). Currently, scientific management has helped in contemporary leadership practices through its applications and concepts.
Firstly, using the first principle of scientific management theory, the practice has helped many leaders in increasing productivity. This principle proposes that leaders should look at each task scientifically to determine the best way to do it. Contrary to top leaders who lack sufficient knowledge on a job, this theory helps managers to critically analyze the input and outcomes of a particular task in an organization. To determine the work quota scientific research process is used. Taylor chose the appropriate and skilled workers; researched the exact sequence of these people use in their work basic operations or actions, and each person uses tools; third, action to eliminate all errors which increase productivity (Zhang, 2015). Therefore, this principle helps leaders in following all appropriate steps before assigning workers certain roles.